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CURE affiliate scholar Stephen Danley quoted in local newspaper

The Victor: A tale of two cities

Kevin C. Shelly, Courier-Post2:19 p.m. EDT July 21, 2014

(Photo: Chris LaChall/Courier-Post)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Victor Pub owner Sam Sarin says: “This is a different kind of place” from the rest of Camden, and the residents of the building, “from college students to Sen. Norcross,” are a big part of his business.

With its stained glass depiction of RCA’s Nipper trademark on its tower above the Camden Waterfront, the Victor Lofts apartment building is at once the most iconic building in the city — and the most ironic. Ironic because while the building preserves the architectural shell of the blue-collar industrial powerhouse that Camden once was, the residents of the Victor Lofts are unlike the rest of the poorest city in America, according to the U.S. Census.

And in a minority city dominated by Hispanics and African-Americans, the large percentage of whites living in the Victor stands out like a snowstorm in July.

Resident Stephen Danley is a professor of public policy at nearby Rutgers University-Camden. He expected a certain amount of heat for moving into a building so different from the city where he lives, teaches, studies, and blogs — sometimes pointedly and sometimes about two of his fellow Victor Lofts residents, state Sen. Donald Norcross and Camden school Superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard.